Comment by vbezhenar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vbezhenar | Hacker News Reader

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Java might not be the most popular VM in Linux, but let's talk Perl or Python. It's installed by default almost everywhere, it's probably impossible to find a useful Linux installation without these runtimes. So writing curl with Python makes perfect sense, right? It's memory safe language, good for handling inherently unsafe Internet data. Its startup time is miniscule, compared to typical network response. Lots of advantages. Yet curl is still written with C.

I've never used libcurl and I don't know why is it useful, so let's focus on curl. Of course if you want C library, you gotta write it with C, that's kind of weird argument.

My point is, there were plenty of better options to replace C. Yet people chose to use C for their projects and continue to do so. Rust is not even good option for most projects, as it's too low level. It's a good option for Linux kernel, but for user space software? I'm not sure.

"[...] it's probably impossible to find a useful Linux installation without [Perl or Python]. [...]"

Oof. We seem to have very, very different definitions for both "Linux" and "useful". If all Linux installs w/o Perl or Python would cease to exist tomorrow, we'd probably enter a global crisis. Industrial processes failing left and right, collapse of wide swaths of internet and telecom infrastructure and god knows what else from ships to cars and smartphones.

Regarding libcurl: libcurl probably represents the vast majority of curl installations. curl the CLI tool is mostly porcelain on top of libcurl. libcurl is used in _a lot_ of places. For example, inside the PHP runtime. And god knows were else, there must be billions of installations as part of other projects. It's not a weird argument, libcurl is 95% of the raison d'être for curl. If you want a curl-like tool in Python or Perl, you gotta write it in Python or Perl. Somebody probably already did. So maybe just use one of these? Instead of demanding that curl be transformed into something which is incompatible with it's mission statement.

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